Hearst Castle: The Biography of a Country House

This is the first book to tell the full story of America’s most glamorous and fascinating country house. It is also an account of one of the most spirited, productive, and long-lasting architect-client relationships in American history. Hearst and Julia Morgan, the first prominent woman architect in America, collaborated for twenty-eight years on the creation of La Cuesta Encantada, or the “Enchanted Hill.” Nonetheless, the magnificent 165-room estate on 250,000 breathtaking acres near the remote seaside hamlet of San Simeon, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, was never completed. Now, drawing on previously unpublished correspondence – nearly 5,000 letters exchanged between Hearst, Morgan, and their staffs from the 1920s through the 1940s – Victoria Kastner chronicles the evolution of this extraordinary Mediterranean-inspired compound, its two spectacular pools, and its astounding collections of art and antiquities. Illustrated here are the Castle’s Spanish ceilings and other architectural fragments, medieval tapestries, Renissance furniture, nineteenth-century sculpture, and wide-ranging examples of European decorative arts, including ceramics, metalworks, textiles, and more.